Naing Tinnyuntpu is no stranger to systematic and efficient approach. He came from manufacturing environment with Bachelor's and Master's in Industrial Engineering (USA).

His notable contributions to the semiconductor industry were the techniques recognized by Sematech as ‘Administrative Quality Best Practices’ during his process engineering days with now defunct IC chip making division of Hewlett-Packard in Singapore.

Born and raised in Yangon, he has lived in six countries and knowledgeable in unrelated areas including self-taught programming languages.
His free online Burmese lessons serve as an effective communication bridge among tourists and growing numbers of foreign business managers with the Myanmar people.

Lesson 37: Burmese words with vowel 'E' or 'I'

Burmese words with 'E' in English Romanization can also be expressed with 'I' variant for most words without ambiguity.
For example, 'De2' in the second tone should be pronounced 'de' and 'ji3' in the third tone is pronounced 'jee'. On the other hand,
romanization with 'e' does not look natural for certain words.

Vowel 'I' seems to be a better choice for many words except for consonants 'b', 'd', 'h', 'w' as there are already 'i' sounding existing
English words 'bi', 'di', 'hi' and 'wi'. Whenever a word is spelled with 'i', it should be read with 'e' sound.

Except for the two stand-alone characters ၏ | e1
and ဤ | e2 in the literary form, most words in this
sound group are spelled with either ိ |
lone3-ji3-tin2 on top of the character, or with ည် |
nya1-thut.

In rare cases, ဉ် | nya1-ga1-lay3-thut is used.

If the word has the character, or the consonant modified character with
ိ | lone3-ji3-tin2 on top, it will be in the
first tone. E.g., ထိ | hti1 means to touch.

To get the second tone, add a curved down line inside the lone3-ji3-tin2 called
ီ | sun2-khut. E.g.,
ထီ | hti2 -means lottery.

To further change into the third tone, add a
း | shay1-ga1-pout on the right side. E.g.,
ထီး | hti2 - means umbrella.

If the word is spelled with ည် |
nya1-thut, it will be in the second tone. E.g., ကြည် |
kji2 means clear.

To change into the first tone from the second tone, add
့ | out-myit. E.g.,
ကြည့် |
kji1 means to look.

To change into the third tone from the second tone, add a
း | shay1-ga1-pout on the right side instead. E.g.,
ကြည်း | kji3 - means infantry.

There are rare exceptions where two pronunciation are possible. E.g., စေ့ can
be either pronounced si1 or say1.

The list of single syllable Burmese words that end with the vowel 'E' sound are given below in Burmese alphabetical order in the same sequence as
in Myanmar dictionary.

ကြည် | kji2
- (1) delighted. (2) [slang] to get
along well as in ဆော်နဲ့ကြည်တယ်။ | hsau2 neare1 kji2 deare2 -
to have a good relation with a girl. (3) pure, clear, and free from impurities as in
ရေကြည်ရာ မြက်နုရာ | yay2 kji2 ya2, myet nu1 ya2 - where the
water is clear and grass is green. (4) part of both male and female Burmese names as in
အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည် | oun2 hsun3 su1 kji2 - Aung San Suu Kyi.

ကြည့် | kji1
- (1) to look as in

ကြည့်ကြသေးတာပေါ့ | kji1 ja1 thay3 ta2 pau1
- We will see about that.

ကြည့်ချင်သေးတယ် | kji1 chin2 thay3 deare2
- I still want to take a look!

ချိ | chi1
- 'able to withstand' usually used in combination with မ in negative form to mean 'unbearable' as in
မခံချိမခံသာ |
ma1 khan3 chi1 ma1 khan2 tha2 - try to maintain composure while bearing the discomfort under intense
verbal attack.

ချီ | chi2
- (1) to pick up and embrace. (2) to snitch as in အသားကျီးချီသွားပြီ။ |
a-tha3 kji3 chi2 thwa3 byi2 - the meat was swiped away by a crow. (3) gives the idea of large amount of
money with a certain base reference as in သိန်းချီပြီးကုန်တယ်။ |
thain3 chi2 pyi3 kone2 deare2 - The expenses were in the region of hundreds of thousand. (4) to march
forward as in ချီတက်လာကြပြီ။ | chi2 tet la2 ja1 byi2 - they have marched forward. Other Usage:
ချီလီ | chi2 li2 - Chile.

ငြိ | nyi1
- (1) entangle and be caught such as cloth on the thorn. (2) to have a brush with the law as in ဥပဒေနှင့်ငြိစွန်းသည်။ |
u1-pa1-day2 hnin1 nyi1 soon dthi2 - breaking the law. (3) emotional attachment between lovers.

ငြီး | nyi3
- to get bored as in ငြီးငွေ့လာပြီ။ |
nyi3 ngway1 la2 byi2
- I've started to get bored.

တည်း | ti3
- (1) to edit as in စာတည်း | sa2 de3
- editor. (2) [literary] ending word of sentence often used at the end of story similar to "And, they lived happily ever after. The end."

ထိ | hti1
- (1) to touch; to be in contact with. E.g.,
သစ်ပင် ဓာတ်ကြိုးနဲ့ထိနေတယ်။ |
thit-pin2 dut-kjo3 neare1 hti1 nay2 deare2 - The tree is in contact with the electrical line. (2) hurt; wounded
as in ထိခိုက်ဒဏ်ရာရသူများ |
hti1-khite dun2-ya2 yah1 thu2 mya3 - those injured and wounded. (3) to suffer a loss or to incur expenses as in
အခွန်တော့ထိပါပြီ။ |
a-khoon2 dau1 hti1 ba2 byi2 - We are going to be hit by a huge tax on this! (4) to be effective as in
ထိထိမိမိ | hti1-hti1-mi1-mi1 or
ထိထိရောက်ရောက် | hti1-hti1-yout-yout.

ဒွိ | dwi1
- (a) complete set as in ဒွိစုံသင်္ကန်း | dwi1-sone2 thin2-gun3 - a complete set
of two piece robe for a Buddhist monk consisting of သင်းပိုင် and
ဧကသီ . (2) hermaphrodite having both male and female sex organs as in
ဒွိလိင် | dwi1 lain2.

နှီး | hni3
- (1) a layer of something spread over a surface.
(2) a thin strip of cane or bamboo used for making mats, furniture, baskets, etc.. (3) to be close as in
ရင်းနှီး | yin3 hni3 . E.g.,
သူနဲ့ရင်းနှီးလား။ |
thu2 neare1 yin3-hni3 la3 - Do you know him well? (4) a piece of fabric to hold hot cooking pots and pans as
in လက်နှီး | let hni3 . (5) to discuss and exchange ideas
as in နှီးနှောဖလှယ်ပွဲ |
hni3-hnau3 pfa1-leare2 pweare3 - conference.

ပိ | pi1
- to be pressed down and trapped under something. Other usages:

ပိစိကွေး | pi1-si1-kway3 - tiny.

ပိပိရိရိ | pi1-pi1 yi1-yi1 - professional act
that is neat or hard to detect, for example, when lying.

ဖိ | pfe1
- (1) to press down; to weigh down. E.g.,
စာရွက်ကို တစ်ခုခုနဲ့ဖိထား။ |
sa2-ywet go2 ta1-khu1-khu1 neare1 pfe1 hta3 - Press down the paper with something. (2) to dominate the other
team in the game as in ကွင်းတစ်ဝက် ဖိထားတယ်။ |
kwin3 ta1-wet pfe1 hta3 deare2 - The ball is mostly in the defending side of the field. (3) whole-heartedly as
in အလုပ်ကိုဖိလုပ်။ | aloat go2 pfe1 loat - work hard with
full determination. (4) pressure as in ဖိအား | pfi1 ah3.

မိ | mi1
- (1) to be caught as in
သူခိုးကိုလက်ပူးလက်ကြပ်မိသွားသည်။ | tha1-kho3 go2 let-pu3-let-kjut mi1
thwa3 dthi2 - The thief was caught red-handed. (2) actions said or done with consequence, or fear of consequence as in
ဘာစားမိလို့လဲ။ | ba2 sa3 mi1 lo1 leare3 -
What did you happen to eat (which results in stomach ache, etc..) (3) effectiveness due to good wire contact or tightness as in
ဘရိတ်သိပ်မမိချင်ဘူး။ | ba1-yate thate ma1 mi1 chin2 bu3 -
The brake is not working well. (4) part of female Burmese names as in မိခိုင် |
mi1 khine2 - Mi Khine.
Other usages:

မိခင် | mi1-khin2 - [formal] mother.

မိဖုရား | mi1-pfa1-ya3 - Queen who is wife of the King.

မိဘ | mi1-ba1
- parents = mother + father.

မိဘမဲ့ | mi1-ba1 meare1 - orphan.

မိထွေး | mi1-dway3
- step mother.

မိမွေးဖမွေး | mi1-mway3 pfa1-mway3 - in the nude (as in the state of newly born).

Word list with Vowel "E" or "I". ရယ်တာပေါ့ (yi2 ta2 pau1) in Burmese roughly means "You are amusing and you make me laugh". The new generation of song lyric writers added interesting new twist to the old satirical chant in the water festival. [17 seconds]

သီ | thi2
- (1) to temporarily hold and secure with safety pin or to stitch by using thread and needle before sewing.
တွယ်အပ်နဲ့ ခဏသီထားလိုက်။ |
tweare2 ut neare1 kha1-na1 thi2 hta3 lite - Use safety pin to hold it for a while. (2) string together items
such as Jasmine flowers into a garland. (3) to sing, a song, or a singer as in

သည် | dthi2
- [literary] When used after the noun or pronoun,
it is like the English verb "to be", "is", "am". When used at the end of the sentence, it is equivalent to colloquial
တယ် |
deare2 - an affirmation word. When used in front of the noun, it means "this", and equivalent to colloquial
ဒီ | de2. Example:
သည်ပစ္စည်းသည် ရှားကုန်ပစ္စည်း ဖြစ်သည်။ |
dthi2 pyit-si3 dthi2 sha3-kone2-pyit-si3
pfyit dthi2 - This product is a rare commodity.

အီ | e2
- the food is eaten until full or so frequently that
one is satiated and no longer wants to eat it. E.g., တော်ပြီ၊ အီသွားပြီ။ |
tau2 byi2... e2 thwa3 byi2 - I have enough of this. Other Usages: